Creativity can save the Donecker mansion in Allentown

St. Luke's University Health Network plans to replace the Donecker mansion at 1801 Halmilton St., Allentown, with a new medical office building.

St. Luke's University Health Network plans to replace the Donecker mansion at 1801 Halmilton St., Allentown, with a new medical office building. (DONNA FISHER / THE MORNING CALL)

Opinion: Why Allentown historic mansion should be saved

One would think that demolishing the majestic mansions of Allentown had become as unfashionable as architectural preservation has become popular decades ago.

Not so for 1801 Hamilton St., as the owners, St. Luke's University Health Network, prepare to cannibalize it to make room for a new office building. Clearly, eradicating the old to make room for the new has benefited downtown City Center, yet the old Dime building clinging to the side of the new PPL Center proves the past can be both complementary and functional.

Before this 6,000-square-foot home of Allentown history becomes a 10,000-square-foot entrance foyer of wasted space, I would hope that St. Luke's considers the building's past.

Here lived Edwin Donecker, an organizer of the Lehigh Valley Symphony Orchestra and the first Lehigh Valley resident to own an automobile, and his wife, Minnie, the great-granddaughter of John Jacob Mickley, credited with bringing the Liberty Bell to Allentown during the Revolutionary War. The second owner, Jesse Bronstein, invented Trojan powder and started the Trojan Powder Co.

Perhaps with a little sacrifice and creativity, this home could remain as an entry that unifies two eras of architecture and purpose, rather than becoming the planned pile of rubble.